If you ever watched the show Bones, here is the real thing. Verity Mathis talks about the collection of species and how they can help with identification of unknown samples.

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The last presentation was in the morphology assessment of mammals.

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And to talk to us about it is Dr.

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Verity Mathis.

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Hi.

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Welcome to the Junction.

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Verity Mathis: Hi.

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Thank you for having me.

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DrG: So can you let our audience

know about what it is that you do?

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Verity Mathis: So I work at the

Floor Museum of Natural History.

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I am the mammals

collections manager there.

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So I take care of all of our

research collections that we

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have that are of modern mammals.

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DrG: Excellent.

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So how does that, how does

that apply to forensics?

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Verity Mathis: That's a good question.

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So, um, we have skeletal material,

hair, bone for you name it.

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If it's a part of a mammal, we have it.

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So it's a very useful resource for

comparing things that you might find at

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a crime scene or at an investigation.

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If you have a piece of bone or

a piece of skull that you don't

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know what it is, natural history

collections can help you identify that.

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And it doesn't even have to be mammal.

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There's collections for

birds and snakes and.

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You name it, there's a collection for it.

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So we can help figure out what

you might have if you don't know,

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and if DNA is not available.

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DrG: You used the term during

the lecture, mammology.

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What does that mean?

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Verity Mathis: So mammology is

basically the study of mammals.

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So that's what we do.

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We study all aspects of mammals generally.

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Some of us have more

specialties than others.

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Um, but yeah, it's just the general

study and appreciation of mammals.

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DrG: What kind of

species do you guys hold?

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Verity Mathis: So we have a little bit

of everything from all around the world.

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So we have almost all the orders

of mammals represented except for

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two very small Australian orders.

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So we, you know, we have a lot of

rodents and bats and carnivores and

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huge number of whales and dolphins.

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Um, manatees.

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Panthers.

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We have a lot of representation from

a lot of, from the southeastern United

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States 'cause that's where we're housed.

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But we also have representation from

all over the world, from Central

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South America to Pakistan to Africa.

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So we have, I think a little over 1100

species of mammals in our collection.

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Um, so it's not representative of

everything in the entire world,

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but it's a good cross section.

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DrG: I have a friend that does forensic

anthropology and they go on excavations

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and they try to dig out bones and stuff.

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Mm-hmm.

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So basically what you do would be,

uh, probably say provide samples to

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be able to compare what they pull out.

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Verity Mathis: Exactly.

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Yeah.

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So we work a lot with anthropology

collections ourselves, so especially

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our, environmental archeology

collections and paleontology collections.

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So if they find a piece of a bone and

they don't know what it is, they can

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bring it to our collection and we can

help them decide what species it was.

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And so they know the context of what

the found, you know, like if it's

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domestic versus a wild animal, um, if

it's been worked or cut, we can kind of

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help figure that out and go from there.

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Yeah.

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DrG: Do you get calls from law

enforcement to help you identify remains?

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Verity Mathis: Uh, every once in a while,

so that's part of the reason why I wanna

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come here today to give a talk, is to

let people know that we are a resource.

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'cause we actually, we don't deal a

whole, whole lot with law enforcement,

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but we are there, we've done some stuff

with the US Fish and Wildlife Service

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in the past to give, um, opinions

on evidence that they've collected.

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But it would be good to let people

know that we are a resource for

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those, those things that they

might find at their crime scenes.

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DrG: I guess so, yeah, that was gonna

be my last question was gonna be where

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do you, where do you see this going?

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Verity Mathis: Yeah, so I mean, that's

just, you know, we're, we have these

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collections of mammals and we love to

have them be useful to people not only

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for research, I mean, the foundation

of research of these collections are

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for research purposes, but they, they

can expand beyond that in so many

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other capacities in terms of education,

outreach, and identification for.

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You know, crime scene

investigations, wildlife forensics,

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anthropological questions.

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Um, just to know that it

doesn't have to be, you know,

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a specific research question.

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It can be just a purely identification

kind of mystery that we like to solve.

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And so that's why we have these

collections just to kind of help

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maybe solve those mysteries.

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I don't know.

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Yeah.

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It's fun.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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DrG: Well, thank you so much for being

here, and thank you for what you're doing.

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I think it's, it's really cool.

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Verity Mathis: Oh, thank you.

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Yeah.

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It's a fun job.